The Secret Committee convened in an undisclosed location recently to discuss the subject of December's TOTM. In the spirit of the season (which is redemption, is it not?) the decision was made to shun a seasonal theme, although the subject does allow for "Frosty the Snowman" if you insist.

The subject of December's TOTM is water in its various forms: streams, bays, rivers, whisky (the water of life), snow, ice.Tunes that immediately come to mind are "Salmon Tails up the Water," "Farewell to Whisky," "The Boys of North Tyne," "O'er the Dyke," "The Keel Row," "Snow on the Ben," "Coquet Side," "The South Shore," "The Steam Boat," use your imagination.

Francis has requested that there be a "sticky" attached to TOTM, allowing for "primitive" tunes at any time. There was a great deal of beer split during the discussion on the subject at the Secret Committee's Secret Meeting in "the Bohemian Grove," resulting in a few sticky chanters. This ignited an explosive discussion on how to properly clean and oil a chanter. Paddy Whack stormed out when Mary Scott teased him about the smell of his pipes, which have a hint of rancid olive oil about them.

I had better re-read the notes to that tune, Matt. That tune as something to do with "plowing" now that I think of it. Now there's a theme for a future TOTM.

Here's another recording. I'm not very happy with it, but here it is. This recording was made with a new mic, preamp and recording software (it came bundled with the preamp). Even though I got the fuzzy distortion out when I adjusted the mix, it showed up again on Soundcloud. I'm also not very happy with my playing because some notes are out of tune. They didn't sound out of tune when I was playing, but I was wearing headphones. The headphones were plugged into my monitor and I couldn't hear very well. Maybe I should plug the headphones into the preamp or D/A interface? Or maybe I should dig out my old cassette tape recorder. https://soundcloud.com/john-dally/snow-on-the-ben

"The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur." - George W. Bush

to clarify - a dyke is a wall, and in the geographic context, usually a drystone wall - a drystane dyke. Going 'o'er the dyke' also has, or used to have, a metaphorical meaning, going 'all the way' in an intimate sense.The word has other meanings of course, some of which relate to water. I can reassure you that when I lived in the US I had to reset many of my word-to-meaning connections.

Matt Seattle wrote:Very good, John, but I suspect the meaning of O'er the Dyke has been lost while it was sailing o'er the water!

I suppose the Dutch influenced the State-side take on "dyke." To me it is a wall put up to keep out water. Isn't there is a Hans Christian Andersen story about a little boy who discovers a hole in the dyke? He puts his finger in it, from which action comes a derogatory name for a certain kind of person. The little Dutch boy was held up to my generation in our youth as a selfless and courageous person who would do whatever needed to be done to save his village. Such notions of "all for one and one for all" are now considered weak and selfish in the world of the 1%. Instead of HCA, we're supposed to take our lessons from Ayn Rand. I met her cat once back in the '80s, after she died (while on Medicare).

"The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur." - George W. Bush